


The Itch

by theskylang



Category: Jennifer's Body (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 18:21:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskylang/pseuds/theskylang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-movie. Orange jumpsuits are itchy, life is complicated and Needy didn't have a plan beyond "Kill Low Shoulder".</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Itch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noble alice](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=noble+alice).



> Happy holidays! I was your originally assigned writer and I just wanted to say I adored this prompt from the very moment it popped into my email inbox. I had insane amounts of fun writing your story, and you actually made me give the gen thing my very first try. I enjoyed it immensely, so thank you for that!
> 
> I hope you'll enjoy this little present and that it'll be at least somewhat close to what you were expecting. It's been a blast writing for you!
> 
> Many thanks to aphrodite_mine for the beta work of Awesomeness.

She's fucking itchy.

Not in a metaphorical way, you know, just itchy, literally. It's that damn jumpsuit. It's driving her insane. Not literally.

She never thought that orange jumpsuits were this uncomfortable. Not that she ever thought about orange jumpsuits at all, let alone about wearing one. Needy wasn't the kind of girl who'd ever do anything to warrant an orange jumpsuit. She never thought she was, anyway. But then again, she also thought she'd never hurt Jennifer, and she ended up killing her. Life has a way of proving you wrong.

It wasn't this uncomfortable at first. When she first put her jumpsuit on, right after her first shower at the prison-slash-mental facility, she was kind of surprised at the smoothness of the fabric. Like she didn't expect anything to feel nice anymore. But it was smooth and comfy and honestly? When everyone else is wearing one, the stigma of the infamous orange jumpsuit just doesn't exist. So she went with it.

But the weeks passed, and it began to itch. Just a little, at first. She'd scratch her knee or her elbow or whatever and it'd go away. Until it didn't. That fucking itch just kept spreading and getting more and more vicious. Kind of like Jennifer. And the damn orderlies just got in her way. Telling her to stop scratching, and making the shrinks say she was self-harming and shit. But she wasn't. It wasn't her fault that her skin was turning raw and red thanks to that damn itch. And they didn't listen. They _wouldn't_ listen. She was fucking itchy and that guy grabbed her arm so she couldn't scratch anymore. So she kicked him. Hard enough to make him bend over in pain. And then she kicked him again. And again. And while she was kicking him?

She wasn't itchy anymore.

Maybe it was the high from whatever shit they injected her with before throwing her into the solitary confinement cell. Maybe it was the high from having kicked a man twice as big as her to the curb. Whatever it was, she slept like a baby that night. Like a deranged aggressive baby, but she wasn't complaining. The next morning, though, she told herself she wasn't going to hurt anyone else. She wasn't like that. She was Needy. Sweet, calm, patient Needy. That's who she was.

And then the weird sleep thing happened. She began to sleep less. And less. And less. Until she found herself laying awake all night. It wasn't insomnia – fuck the shrinks – and the meds did nothing for her. Because she wasn't sick, she was possessed. Half-demon. Exorcist style. Of course they didn't believe her. They added "delusional" to her file and moved on. As if she chose not to sleep. As if anyone would want to be awake in that hellhole for one more second than was strictly necessary.

So she just lay there, looking at the ceiling and thinking. About Chip. Nice, adorable Chip who didn't deserve to die. About all the boys that didn't deserve to die either, but did anyway. And about Jennifer. Who did deserve it, because she killed all those boys before. And the demon who used her body to feed on them. He deserved it most of all. So when Needy killed her, she wasn't really killing Jennifer. She was killing a vicious demon. It was her tit after all, not her heart. Her heart hadn't been there for a long time.

That's what she kept telling herself, anyway.

And that's what she told the shrink. But he didn't believe her. He told her she killed her best friend, and she had to admit that to be able to get healed. He told her there was no demon. That it'd been Jennifer all along. So she got off the chair and kicked him to a bloody pulp. She didn't kill him. She would have, if three orderlies hadn't picked her up and put her back in that solitary cell. That's the day they wrote "Kicker" on her file. In capital letters and underlined, just in case someone missed it.

She didn't feel bad that time. She was itchy and she'd been awake for over a week and this man talked to her as if he knew her. As if he gave a shit about her. He'd had it coming. What the fuck did he know about Jennifer, anyway?

She knew Jennifer. She knew her better than she knew herself. She knew what her favorite pizza toppings were, and her deepest darkest secrets, and how she'd gotten that little scar on her back, and what her skin tasted like after a game of boyfriend and girlfriend. She knew her. And that wasn't her on her bed the night she killed the demon. It wasn't her in the pool. It wasn't her eating boys like some kind of young Hannibal Lecter with killer boobs. It wasn't her puking evil all over her kitchen floor. She knew it wasn't Jennifer.

Because she felt nothing when Jennifer went to her house that night. And she'd always been able to feel Jennifer. Sense her. Just like she felt Jennifer's touch a second before it happened, and she tasted Jennifer's lips even before she kissed her. So, when she snuck into her house and didn't set off Needy's Jen-dar? That was not Jennifer Check.

Time has no meaning when you're locked up. It doesn't matter if it's 7 a.m or midnight when they tell you to go have breakfast, or to take a shower, or to go outside. What difference would it make, really? It's not as if they give you a choice on your daily schedule. But that thing people say about time standing still is a load of crap. You feel the days go by. You feel every single second you are there. Because there's nothing else to do other than to count the days you've been locked up. Wearing that jumpsuit. That fucking itchy jumpsuit.

At least she had a hobby. Reading her fanmail. And re-reading it when people stopped caring enough to send letters. She made a habit out of concentrating on letting Jesus Christ into her heart. He never accepted the invitation. But, honestly? With all the demonic shit she had in her heart, she couldn't blame the guy for not wanting to touch it with a ten foot pole. Something did happen in one of her silent praying sessions, though.

She hovered.

She didn't fly, she _hovered_. It was fucking scary the first time it happened, opening her eyes after giving up on Jesus and seeing the bed two feet below her. The demon powers liked to sneak up on her without a warning. One day you sleep, the next you don't. One day you have a conscience, the next it's gone. One day you're mostly normal, and the next you're hovering over your bed. It was a fun way to spend her sleepless nights, though. Training a little. Seeing how high up she could go. It was better than trying to keep a hold on her sanity during the night.

In the months she spent inside, she lost count of the number of orderlies and shrinks she sent to the hospital. Some of them deserved it, some of them just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. She soon stopped caring, though. She figured her demon needed space to grow and it ate her conscience to make some room. Not that she missed it. No more wondering if she'd made a mistake by killing Jennifer. Not caring was almost therapeutic.

Shrinks 0 – Demon 1

But she was still itchy. Not even a good hard round of Kick The Orderly got rid of the itch anymore. That's when she hovered away from her cell and hitchhiked her way to Low Shoulder's hotel. Things needed to go full circle. They killed Jennifer and turned her into a demon. She'd already killed the demon, but that wasn't enough. She needed to kill them too. With the knife they used to start the madness, because it felt kind of poetic and Needy had always appreciated poetry. Even if Jennifer said it was lame. What the fuck did she know about poetry, anyway?

So she killed them. She took her time, too. Felt her fingers breaking flesh, hot blood soaking her hands and bones breaking under her touch. It wasn't like the movies. Human flesh is fucking tough to break. Even with a knife. It's not as easy as it may look. But Needy liked it. Enough to pull out the knife and stab that bastard again, just to feel the blade sliding into his chest once more. It hadn't felt nearly as good when she did it to Jennifer. Then again, she still had a conscience when she killed her.

Another point for the demon.

But she's itchy again. It's been a day since she left the hotel, and the itch is back. She was hoping for some kind of demonic possession remedy the moment she killed them. Fuck the movies and their false advertising. Real life is never that uncomplicated. And she's the heroine, right? She killed the bad guys. She's the last woman standing. Hollywood says she should be well on her way to her happy ending right about now. But this feels more like a beginning. And an underwhelming one, at that.

What does one do after killing some guys who had a pact with Satan? It's not like she can go back to Devil's Kettle. And she's never really had a life plan beyond applying to the same college as Jennifer. She figured wherever they'd accept Jennifer, there's no way they wouldn't accept her. She doesn't have a dream career or a dream future. She doesn't even know who she is. She's never been anything other than Jennifer's shadow. Other than that, she's got nothing.

That's fucking tragic.

If this was a movie, she'd have a boyfriend waiting for her somewhere. But her boyfriend died, because her pretend boyfriend tried to eat him. And she doesn't even know which one is the real one anymore. She doesn't know if she's into guys except for Jennifer, or into girls except for Chip. If she was pretending to be Chip's girlfriend or pretending to be Jennifer's. She's always heard bisexuals are just greedy. Then again, she's also always heard demons don't exist.

To be honest, though, her sexual orientation is the least of her worries right now. She's facing the outside world without Jennifer. And she doesn't miss her in a fluffy way. In a BFF way. She misses her in a Stockholm Syndrome kind of way. She doesn't know how to be Needy without Jennifer telling her what Needy is supposed to be like. Fuck, she doesn't even feel like a Needy anymore. Jennifer started calling her that. Even if Jennifer was the needy one. It's kind of ironic. She guesses so, anyway. She never really got the definition of irony.

Anita or Needy or Kicker or just that crazy chick in the jumpsuit, she has no clue what she's like. Is she really nice, or was she just playing the part since Evil Bitch was already taken? Is she really shy, or was she just letting Jennifer do the talking?

She feels like killing someone.

No reason, really. Not because she's frustrated, even though she definitely is. She just feels like it. Kicking just won't cut it anymore. And she knows she's going to find someone who deserves to be killed. Someone's bound to piss her off sooner or later. People are assholes, anyway.

She never thought that before. She used to believe people were good by nature. Fuck, she was best friends with Jennifer Check, that had to be proof of her faith in human nature. But not anymore. Now, she is a cynical bitch, just like Jennifer. Maybe she didn't just get possessed by the demon. Maybe some of Jennifer's soul got into her somehow. That's fucked up, right? Jennifer just won't stop controlling her, not even after death. At least she doesn't feel like eating people. Yet. You never know with demon possessions.

But she likes to think she'll be different. She likes the idea of using her powers for good. She killed a demon and a band of evil Satan-worshippers. She could keep doing that. Kill murderers and rapists and abusive bastards. Scratch her itch by doing the right thing. Fuck ethics.

It shouldn't be that hard, anyway. The world is full of scum just begging to be killed. And she's itching to do it. Maybe she is going insane, after all. Not that she thinks she is. She's just, you know. Missing parts of her soul. Loose around the edges, if you will. Not insane. Even if she looks the part, with the orange jumpsuit soaked in blood and a ratty sweatshirt covering the stains. She doesn't need the sweatshirt, actually. It's been a while since she last felt cold or heat. But a bloody orange jumpsuit is not the best look for someone who's on the run.

She decides the first thing she needs to do is get as far away as possible from the place where she killed those guys a short day ago, just in case the police are after her. Not that she thinks they'd believe tiny harmless Needy could do all that damage. Not even deranged Kicker. But better safe than sorry, right? So she hitches a ride with a middle-aged man who is overly friendly and asks him to take her somewhere. Anywhere.

He has "rapist" written all over his face. Some would say it's not fair to judge that based solely on looks, but they don't know shit. They have consciences getting in the way. This guy looks dangerous. She saw him looking at her boobs when she was scratching her stomach. And who accepts an offer to drive a young girl to an undetermined destination, anyway?

She just needs to wait until he makes the first move. Maybe he'll put his hand on her knee or go for the full-on groping. Just give her a signal that he deserves to die. Give her permission to scratch her itch. She shouldn't be looking forward to it. Jennifer really did eat her soul and shit it out, didn't she? But she doesn't really care. Her clothes are itchy and there's some kind of Low Shoulder memorial on the radio that's driving her insane. Not literally. But just enough to ask the man to pull over for a second. She doesn't care if he deserves it right now.

She really needs new clothes.


End file.
